Brake drum locknut size?

At about 18,000km (not a typo), my rear brakes have been squealing alot during the past couple of days. I used to drive my MT with what I now consider excessive braking, but stopped that maybe around 2000km ago. I'm replacing my front pads this summer; they can last longer but I don't want to end up having to replace them in the cold during winter. Even so, for the rear brakes to be making noise at this point is certainly strange.

From what I've read, the Mirage has a somewhat unique (in North America) setup, where the locknut keeps the whole assembly together. I'm wondering if anyone knows the size of the locknut. The biggest socket I have is 22mm, so I need to know which size to borrow from a friend

I haven't change rear pads yet, did have a car that had noisy rear brakes once though. Only if you hit the brakes just right it would make a resonance kinda noise from the rh rear. I just cleaned everything up with brake clean and put a little grease where the shoes pivot and the rub points on the backing plate and no more noise.

I guess the warning about removing the locking nut means you remove it with the wheel off the ground?

That warning is somewhat odd. You can't access the nut until the wheel has been removed from the car. So how would it bear any weight of the car?

The only way you would have weight on the brake drum is if you jacked up the car, removed the wheel, and then did something crazy like lower the brake drum onto a jackstand to hold the car up while you removed the nut?!?

Nah you can get at it no problem even with all 4 tires on the car. Your just spoiled with them fancy rims. Lol

LOL...you got me there. I guess if you were crazy you could take the drum off with the steel wheel still attached!

Why would they care if you remove it quicker than 8rpm tho? For heat? I don't understand...

They probably don't want you to zip it off with an impact. My guess is that could possibly reduce/damage the nut's 'self-locking' properties...which could potentially lead to the drum/wheel coming off. I hate it when that happens.